Football bowl games are not what they used to be

This is day — what? — of the college football bowl season. There has been at least one bowl game on television every day or night since sometime around the beginning of Advent. Who can keep track any more?

Gone are the days of New Year's Day bowls stacked one over another all day long and into the night. You had to choose which one to watch. You couldn't possibly watch them all, even if you had a TV remote control, which you didn't. You had to physically get up and turn the knob to get a different channel, and because all TV was broadcast, you might not get a clear picture on one or more of the games.

The big bowls were the only bowls at the time — the Rose Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl — and they were all played in warm climates so that those of us shivering in a poorly heated house could vicariously feel the tropical warmth shown on TV. Those days are long gone. Bowls have proliferated. Someone noticed that attracting 100,000 football fans for a holiday weekend was good for the local economy, so bowls grew in all sorts of places, such as Memphis, Nashville, Orlando, Atlanta, Tempe, and so on. It got to the point that there were so many bowls that teams with barely winning records received guaranteed bowl berths. Thus, we have bowls pitting two 6-6 teams against each other in stadiums that are more than half empty.

While they may have been money-makers for the local economy, bowls were expensive to put on, so corporate sponsors were added with companies like Continental Tire and Tostitos corn chips lending their names to bowls.

And, of course, television ruled everything in collegiate football (just as in collegiate basketball). The TV rulers determined that it would be better for their ratings if the big bowls didn't compete for viewers' attention, and so the bowls were spread out from early December to sometime in January with starting times determined not by local clocks but by the national prime time. Tonight's game starts at 8 or 8:30, which means I might watch the beginning of the game but probably won't watch the end.

For all its flaws, college football is a supremely entertaining and exciting athletic/art form. I have watched bits of most of the bowl games this season, excepting the arcane bowls in out-of-the-way places pitting two mediocre teams against each other. Some of the games (such as Duke vs. Texas A&M) were supremely suspenseful and entertaining, and some were runaways. That's the way college football is.

You can't escape television's grasp

Last week, I spent a couple of hours in the waiting room of two car repair shops while my car's oil was changed and four tires were replaced. I had a good novel to read, so two hours of being absorbed in reading should have been a treat, not a negative.

But there was a catch. In both places, a television blared from its corner throne, and all of us customers were expected to bow down and worship the inane proclamations from the idiot box. Although I was absorbed in my book, I could not escape the unrelenting chatter from the TV. The giggling talk-show panelists, the whining soap-opera stars and peripatetic advertisers kept inserting themselves into the book I was reading, leaving me discombobulated and disturbed. When a television is in the room, there is no escaping it. It overwhelms conversation and distracts reading. It disrupts rational thought.

Although I detest being forced to give attention to the television with its too-loud volume, there are fewer and fewer businesses whose waiting areas are without a television. I've even found televisions built into gas pumps so that even the five minutes of pumping gas cannot be a respite from the ubiquitous tube. I usually hunt for a seat facing away from the TV, but in many rooms, all the seats face the television ("pay attention!"). You are a prisoner, and you cannot escape your torture.

A video screen (not always broadcast/cable television) can be found almost everywhere now — waiting rooms, banks, restaurants, gas pumps. It should be no surprise that most of the population is distracted, confused and unable to focus on a single task. The insatiable video distraction will not leave us alone.

What Charlie Sheen's antics say about society

Having never watched "Two and a Half Men," I'm in no position to judge the television show or its star, Charlie Sheen. But from a couple of scenes caught in channel-flipping and from the excessive news coverage of Sheen's criminal activities and firing from the popular show, I can safely say Sheen, the network and the television-watching public are all getting what they deserve.

In the comedy, Sheen plays a misogynistic, crude, rude womanizer — a character that apparently is not too distant from his actual personality. What surprises me, but shouldn't, is that the American television audience finds this sort of misbehavior entertaining. "Two and a Half Men" was the country's top-rated show, even though I'm not sure it contains a sympathetic or admirable character.

Television has come a long way from the era when its male characters were admirable, respectful, helpful, kind, even heroic. "Father Knows Best," "My Three Sons," "Gunsmoke," "Daniel Boone," "Marcus Welby, M.D.," "The Donna Reed Show," "Leave It to Beaver" and others all had "good" leading men who respected other people and did not spout sarcasm each time they opened their mouths. Not everyone of my generation grew up trying to be like Ozzie Nelson or Jim Anderson, but we weren't copying the crudeness and snarky self-centeredness of Sheen's character.

My hope is that the network's experience in seeing its well-paid star crumble into rants against his employer, his audience and people in general will lead to a return to situation comedies that are not overflowing with sarcasm, one-upmanship and verbal venom. But that's probably hoping too much. There are plenty of Charlie Sheen types around for the networks to hire. We've raised a generation of them.

If you care about ideas, read this

Before you skip quickly to another blog or back to Facebook or Tweet your latest update, please read this. This column published in Sunday's News & Observer analyzes the impact of today's digital communications, which are increasingly demanding shorter, more frequent and more "seamless" contacts. Unfortunately, as author Neal Gabler observes, quick is not conducive to serious, and he worries that "ideas" — the thing that distinguishes civilization, knowledge and intellect — are being left in the dust of the digital world. I addressed this same issue last month.

Gabler cites Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death," one of my favorite books, which warns of the impact of a television-centric society. Television, Postman says, endangers conversation and turns people into zombies, or at least couch potatoes. The medium is particularly hazardous for young children, he warns. Written language is the catalyst to learning and the glue that holds together society. Postman worried that as written communication loses ground to spoken or visual communication, hard-fought civilizing advances will be endangered.

Now, after Postman's death, Gabler sees a new threat to human intelligence — the character-limited and ubiquitous text message in whatever form. Texting or its successors have replaced television in jeopardizing serious conversation, intelligent communication and, yes, ideas. Says Gabler: "To the extent that ideas matter, we are no longer amusing ourselves to death. We are texting ourselves to death."

It's a long column, but it's well worth reading.